In Keenin’s dream the neighborhood pickpockets were in his house again and they were noisy. His mother would never have stood for it, but his mother…he wondered if that was why he was sitting there, back against the cupboard. Flour was sprinkled over the floor like dust from when his mother had made bread atop the counter. He sure was hungry. But he would not move from his spot. He refused to. This was his last stand and he would prove...he would. 

“Hey,” a pickpocket said.

Tired. 

“Hey!” 

His eyelids flickered open and he raised his head again. 

“Come outside,” the Lester in his dream said.

Well maybe…he shuffled slightly over towards the wall and looked down in resolution, but then he couldn’t ignore the tap, tap on his shoulder, like the water when it dripped and dripped. He glared at the nuisance boy, who stopped his poking, and Keenin resolutely slid one more foot away from him.

“Aw, come on you are almost there,” the annoying boy said, “You can see outside now right.” 

Keenin refused to look towards the door. He was proving...he couldn’t remember what exactly. 

Either way the light from outside was annoyingly bright. He would just wake up soon.

“Is this your house?”

Keenin’s eyes fluttered open. He was still in the dream house of his childhood, but the voices of the pickpockets were gone. A familiar face looked down on him, her eyes bright and her hair as soft as feathers. Tess had found him. Keenin looked around one more time for his friend Lester, but not only was the dream house empty, but it somehow looked more real, as though the surface lines had been bolded over.

“Did you do this?” Keenin finally asked.

“If you’re finished here someone wants to talk to you,” Tess told him.

Maybe he should have been more concerned that the ghost of his dead friend was invading his dream, but Keenin knew that there was indeed something between them that had to be settled. He followed her out of the dream house and through the dreamed-up streets of his hometown.

“I heard you were going home,” Tess said. “Visit my grave if you do.”

“Sure.” 

It didn’t seem to matter since it was all in a dream.

“You aren’t very talkative these days.”

“There’s more to think about.” 

The houses lacked certain detail that he was sure he would not forget. He noticed that the dream bakery had no sweets in the window, an item he would have never missed. Tess must have guiding the dream. She had not known the structures as well as him.

“You’re so grown up now that it’s funny,” she told him.

He shook his head.

“It’s only been one month Tess.”

“But it feels like forever. Isn’t it odd? You were the same as every other beggar on the street and I was just some girl caring for my sick mother and now we’re so far away.”

She was tempting him. He remembered Dia telling him that ghosts did that.

“This meeting won’t take long will it? You’re not leading me in circles are you?”

“Me. You're the one who-- oh never mind,” she said stopping by one of the nondescript wooden houses, “This guy will explain it all to you. Just try not to offend him.” 

Keenin noticed the cold feeling of his hand as Tess let go and the real world popped back into focus. His attention focused on a moth fluttering around an oil lamp affixed to a stone building. Wet fog blurred the edges of every opening, but under the archway next to the lamp Keenin saw a woman waiting outdoors for him, holding a small lamp of her own. Keenin rubbed his left arm in an attempt to regain warmth as a numbing cold had seeped in from his dream.

“Sir,” the woman said. “Someone would like to speak to you.”  

She did not wait. Keenin followed, not daring to ask how otherworldly forces had influenced her as she led with her small light into the darkened home and up a narrow flight of stairs to a less heated second floor until he was outside the door of someone’s room. The door was open, but it was still too dark to see into the entire space. This room seemed personal, but she did not enter.

When she glanced at him, her eyes were full of sadness; whether her emotion was for him Keenin could not say. He stopped rubbing his cold arm not knowing how to respond. But with no words, she simply walked back down the steps, her weak light retreating as the space fell further into darkness and a more pronounced silence.

Moonlight danced with the shadows in pools on the floor. His adjusting eyes caught shapes of toys such as wooden swords and carved horses in an unorganized mess across the room.  There was the faint smell of smoke accompanying a pile of weakly glowing embers in a fireplace and a small bed with sheets tucked neatly and undisturbed. In all appearances the room was uninhabited.

“Please, do come in,” he heard the child before he saw him.

The child sat in a chair in the furthest corner of the room where moonlight didn't reach. Keenin gripped his arm a little tighter and moved forward until he abruptly stopped when his focus met the speaker's cloudy dead eyes. And a familiar bluish glint that shone past the dead eyes reminded Keenin of how all his troubles started. That was all Keenin needed to know this boy with a pasty complexion and milky eyes was inhabited by a god of death.

“Finally," the child said. "It comes to an end."

And Keenin knew the god came to collect him. He stood quietly a long while, feeling adrift in an endless time. 

"Why?" Keenin asked quietly.

He had survived this long. Why not longer? 

“We made a deal Keenin. You would die and Tess would stay here. It was simple.”

“But...Tess... 

He was sure Tess should have lived then. 

“Yes. Your one and only love would get to live according to our deal.”

“But we're not…

"What," the boy mocked. "She's not 'quote on quote alive' and you're not, what?"

The boy dared an answer. But Keenin started to recall the night of the fire. Just him, and Tess, and the fire. Then Alaban. Isn't that how it had been? 

“I walked out of it,” Keenin said doubtfully. 

“Please. A few steps and you were practically in my realm. Do you wonder why the ceiling didn't fall on your head or why you didn't scream in flaming agony. How about why your words didn't choke up in smoke? I mentioned a saving the day solution. And…”

“I agreed to die,” Keenin finished for him.

He did remember it. Tess had been dead when this guy had offered to bring her back. The smoke must have clouded his head and he had honestly not wanted to think about it. 

“Finally,” the death god said.

“But why didn't I?”

“Because,” the god said. “The fire spirit Calendor got to you before I did and everything stopped. No more Tess and no more you dying. Really, he and I are quite the companions, but he has never been such a nuisance in his entire existence.” 

"So..." Keenin started. "You want me to die? Now."

Surely the guy could make an exception for his own mistake. 

"I want you to agree to die," the death god clarified.

Agree, Keenin noted. This death god must have had restrictions, which explained how Keenin had survived for so long. Perhaps he could keep on surviving.

"Can't we change the….

"No," the death god said flatly.

"Tess isn't alive," he argued.

"Keenin," the death god said. "I am trying to do my job."

The idea of the death god having a job like a regular person was almost as odd as being talked to by a corpse. Keenin scrutinized his enemy, noting that the god did not have perfect control. The dead boy's eyes were slightly facing separate directions and his muscles seemed stiff.

“Can it not wait a year or so?” Keenin suggested. He still liked his life. 

The death god stared unwaveringly back through his corpse's blue eyes.

“Not when Iscara is hoarding souls for his army. The ghosts he lured and trapped here are eating away at life.”

“So what happens if I don't agree to this?” He might as well know.

“People die,” the god said, spreading his hands dramatically.

“But that always happens.”

A sigh. “All the people die. Then the god of life gets to redesign the world, I get to gather the souls to sort into new forms, love gives them some motivation, and fate gets to start a new script. But let’s keep her out of this. I just need you to die. A simple yes would suffice. Is this what you do when you get nervous, question everything? No, don't answer. Now you’ve got me doing it.” 

The god possessed gloomily rested his head on his hand and his elbow on his knee. 

“But….”

“You're lucky I can't just kill you.”

“It doesn’t even make sense. You're a god. Why do you need someone’s body? Why can't it be some other person?”

“It is regrettable. I know. Us gods and you people used to live together, but you started abusing our power and now we have strict guidelines. There is no other way. Keenin it has to end.”

But it hadn’t. Thinking of the friends he needed to get back to Keenin knew that life could go on. He remembered the hopeful future he had found when Aleban took him in.

“I’m sorry,’ Keenin told the god.

Keenin felt the warmth of the fire spirit Calendor at his side and when he raised his hand the corpse child caught fire. The death god smiled sadly as his vessel burned and a horrid smell filled the air. Keenin felt like he stood there for an eternity with the heat against his skin, until this too seemed to melt into a dream.

***

From his room at the inn, Keenin sat in bed and faced the splotchy wood of the door. He let himself imagine Dia sleeping peacefully across the hall, finally leaving behind the guilt of getting a second life. Then he caught the sound of her voice out the window and smiled. 

Keenin left the safety of his bed and wiped the sun from his eyes as he wandered down the stairs. His sleepy mind half expected to encounter the sight of a blazing hearth fire and rafters hung with drying bundles, but he came to face the empty lobby and bar where the bartender was organizing the shelf of liquor.

Keenin set a hand on the Inn’s front door, but instead of pushing it aside, he closed his eyes and listened more to the cheerful voices outside. Somehow he knew that it would never be him on the other side. And the only place he was going was to war. That death god was right about something. The cause of this tragedy had to be killed. 

“Hey.”

He closed his eyes tighter against the sound.

“Are you all right kid?” the bartender asked louder.

Keenin opened his eyes.

“I’m fine. Just a headache.” He let his hand drop to his side and turned to the barkeeper. “Can I have two meat pies?”

“It’s early morning kid. We have porage now. Come back at lunch.”

“Please.”

Something in Keenin's voice convinced him. The barkeeper held out a hand. “Fine, ten copper.”

Keenin took out the coins and passed them over the table.

“The pies will be out soon,” the barkeeper said leaving to give the order to those in the kitchen.

Keenin took a seat on one of the chairs along the front of the bar to wait. He thought that Dia should be happy with the food. In a way, he was starting to get frustrated again over the petty arguments of his new friends, but he would also miss them. The barkeeper walked back in. 

“Could I also have some water?”

The guy poured him a glass and Keenin pulled it over, only to have something to hold.  

“Sorry. Things got a little heated,” Dia said sitting down beside him.

Keenin focused on the decorated bottles on the top shelf behind the bar.

“It’s not your fault,” he told her.

A cook handed the barkeeper a plate with what Keenin knew were the meat pies. The barkeeper put the plate in front of him and wandered off.

“What’s that?” Dia asked.

How stupid, Keenin thought to himself. He kept thinking to ignore her now because it wouldn't be much longer, but she was right there anyways. He pushed the plate over.

“It’s for you and Clide, if he eats these things,” Keenin told her.

“Oh. Thanks.”

She picked up the pastry and took a bite.

“I was going to wake you,” Dia said. “I even knocked. I guess you meant what you said when you wanted to take a break from our evening lessons. You could have said you were tired before the magic show.”

“Dia, seriously. All you did was request the most complicated shapes.”

He wasn’t going to say that his dreams were bothering him for a while now.

“Imagination is everything.” 

Keenin stared into his glass of water. 

“We're almost packed up,” Dia said. “Or rather Clide, Vindice, and Ru have almost loaded everything. I brushed down the horses.”

“You were missing me then,” Keenin said. 

“Nor really.” 

Dia struck her fork to the empty plate in front of her and her eyes shifted to the meat pie sitting untouched in front of him. 

“You should finish eating that and come out. They must be ready by now,” Dia told him. 

Keenin remained by the bar while she left. He didn’t pick up his fork. 

“She’s quite the tough girl,” the bartender said. “You ought to admit straight out how you feel.”

Ya, no. He wasn't even sure how he felt. Keenin pushed his plate away.

“Thanks for the food,” he said simply. 

He followed Dia outside, letting in the bustling noises and sweeter scents of the morning. A green painted homely wagon detailed in red scrawls had been rolled up near the door and Clide was helping to load crates alongside a dark-haired man who must have been Vindice’s partner Ru. Vindice stood by the remaining boxes counting out money for the fresh delivery while Dia held a potato as though to inspect the lot herself. Vindice spoke a comment that couldn’t be heard. When Keenin moved closer Dia had already run after Clide to inspect the inside of the wagon. He regarded Vindice. 

 “What did you do, put them under a spell?” he asked.

“Just a suggestion that this was always the plan to make it less suspicious. Have you decided what to do when we arrive?” 

“Not yet.”

Let's see. Find his friend Lester. Kill Iscara. Return to Aleban. Maybe they could all move back to Stonefield and open a shop. Maybe Dia would be a teacher. Maybe himself a trader of rare herbs. And Clide?

He watched the dragon boy stand on the back of the wagon and drop an apple into Dia’s hands, making her smile. She gave him a crude curtsy in return. 

“I don’t see any potions?” Keenin mentioned. Hadn’t Vindice said she was smuggling those.

“People see what they want. And you can never have enough food in a war. Don’t tell me you’re already having second thoughts,” Vindice nagged him.

“No,” Keenin said. “Not anymore.”